Homes England the only creditor set to receive cash

Creditors of the failed modular housebuilder Ilke Homes are owed a combined £321m, but the vast majority are not expected to receive a penny.

According to a liquidators’ progress report for the period 18 September 2023 to 17 September 2024, Homes England is the only organisation that can expect to recover any cash.

Ilke homes

The government’s housing and regeneration agency was owed £68.77m by Ilke, as a result of debentures granted in 2019 and 2021, but is only expected to get £128,423 of that back - around 2%.

This money will come solely from realisations of plant and machinery. An auction in August 2023 resulted in the sale of Ilke’s high-speed assembly line for £188,000.

In August, an administrators report had predicted Homes England would recoup around £5m. 

Ilke’s other creditors can expect to receive nothing, according to the report prepared by Alix Partners.

Ordinary preferential creditors were owed a combined £734,614, preferential secondary creditors were owed a combined £2.19m, while unsecured creditors were owed a combined £249m.

Ilke entered liquidation in October 2023 after going into administration in June of that year, with the majority of Ilke’s 1,150 employees were made redundant with immediate effect.

Debts owed by the company were understood to include money owed in equity to its investors, which included TDR Capital, Sun Capital and Fortress Investment Group, among others. 

>> Read more: What went wrong for Ilke Homes?

After its founding in 2018, the Knaresborough-based business expanded rapidly, establishing regional offices in London, Birmingham and Bristol.

In 2021 it took on a further 500 staff after securing £60m of funding, despite posting significant losses the previous year.

In December 2022, it secured £100m in funding from the aforementioned group of investors, to expand production to 4,000 homes per year and create 1,000 additional jobs.

At the start of June 2023, however, investors told the company they were pulling funding due to concerns over the rate of cash burn, which prompted an immediate halt in production and the start of an urgent sale process, which ultimately came to nothing.